For this infographics assignment, I’ve decided to cover the topic “abuse”. My infographics would be about how abuse works – what’s the cycle in an abusive relationship (with your partner, friend, or family) and the tactics that abusers use to emotionally manipulate their targets.

The reason I’d like to cover this topic is because I can relate to it personally, and I think it’d be helpful to create something that’d inform people on how an abuse is and raise the general awareness on abusive relationship. This infographic will be more inclined to be informative on the characteristics of abuse rather than the cause and effect of it. In a lot of cases, many people do not realise that they’re being abused just because there isn’t actual physical harm being done to them. This is not true at all and people deserve to know and identify factors in their relationship with anybody that might be abusive.

I’m particularly intrigued with how abuser’s mind work; why do they crave the domination and control of their target/victim? What happens if they’re forced not to abuse, do they experience withdrawal like drug users do? Is abusive behavior inherited, or does it have the possibility to be related to the world’s long history of slavery which causes a heriditery trauma? Can abusers change? I’ll be researching more into these so I’d be able to explain the behavior and manipulative tactics better.

So far on my research, many articles describe abusers to be deceptive and don a dual personality. In abusing their victims, theyd isolate the them to create emotional dependency, blame their victims for their temper and degrade them verbally, lower their self esteem and make them believe that no one would ever want them but the abuser. To create this dependency, they’d go so far as to create hostility victim and their friend behind their backs, so that the victim would come home and seek comfort from the abuser. They’d manipulate real events in their re-telling, withholding informations so that it would appear to the victim (and others) and they’re the true victims in the situation. Abusers justify their act of violence towards their target, blaming them and pushing the responsibility onto them with the classic saying of “If you haven’t …., I wouldn’t have done that to you”. Most victims would then feel that it is really their fault, that they deserve the blame or the beating that’s being subjected onto them. This lowers the victims’ self esteem and most of the time, abuse victims do not remember their self identity prior to the abuse. Victims would feel helpless because many wouldn’t believe their story, as abusers often appear to be the good guy outside – their abusive behavior is seperated from their ‘normal’ life. It is also very difficult to break an abusive relationship, as abusers would tend to convince the victims that they’d change, buy them gifts and coddle them and would resume their abuse the next few days. Abusers have high and unrealistic expectations on things and when things don’t happen as they wanted, theyd blame the victim for it. They have double standards, and often react exaggeratedly & differently to same situations depending on their mood. It’s impossible to please an abuser, but their manipulative tactics make the victim yearn to please them (to no avail).

I’ll do more in-depth research on the nature of abusive relationship and more of its characteristics, but so far that’s a brief summary to what I’ve been reading into and would be covering on my infographic poster + animation.

07/08/2016

Mind-mapped summary on abuser’s various tactics in abusing their victims.

“ABUSER” collage, their keywords and typefaces (with explanation on why I chose them)

Moodboard on “Abuse”, based on the feeling and darkness of abuse

3 main ideas/concept that I came up with the poster are:

-Showing the brain (“mind”), creating a sort of mindmapped infographic

-Using the “blueprint” look, because the information is about how abuser works / the tactics they use

Grungy technical blueprint illustration on blue background

(Inspired by these)

-Viewing abuser’s methods from the “alarming/dangerous” POV, visualising it with red alarm signals